


Cat's Cross

by cassieoh



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel and Demon True Forms (Good Omens), Crowley maybe has a thing for Aziraphale being strong, First Kiss, First Time, Gen, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Kissing, Metaphysical Sex, Miscommunication, Multi, Strong Aziraphale (Good Omens), True Forms, experienced and also well educated Aziraphale, gardeners cottage shenanigans, inexperienced but well educated Crowley, only a little one though certainly not worth mentioning, some light groping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22936519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh
Summary: Before the Apocalypse, before they were their own side and were free to show that however they wished, they were the Nanny and the Gardener and they were left alone for a very particular holiday while their charge was away with his family.ORCrowley plans to spend the time the Dowlings are away getting very drunk, napping, and generally not wearing high heels. Fate, and Aziraphale, have other plans.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling
Comments: 26
Kudos: 146
Collections: MFU Palentine's Day Exchange, Weird Ethereal and/or Demonic and/or Supernatural Sex Shenanigans





	1. Calabesh Net

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ximeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria/gifts).



Okay, so the thing is this, Crowley isn’t what anyone in possession of their full faculties could call _inexperienced_. He knows all about sex; knows all the positions and strategies and combinations and anything else one might need to know. He once spent a year carefully teaching a delightfully clever and ambitious woman by the name of Isabella de Luna everything he could and, from all historical accounts, he’d been a pretty good teacher[1]. All this is to say that Crowley is well versed in the theoretical side of amorous encounters.

It’s just that, well, he hasn’t actually... done much of anything. Romantic. Sexual.

_Intimate._

Even thinking those words sends a shudder down his spine, because he wants all that[3] but he knows he can’t have it and he’s starting to think this, this ceaseless, aching _wanting_ is his real punishment. To be torn away from Her grace was nothing compared to sitting across from Aziraphale, each three sheets to the wind, and know that he couldn’t ever breach the invisible wall between them (there are always walls with Aziraphale he thinks; the walls of Eden, the walls of books, walls of words and warnings and ‘no Crowley, that’s too close, too much, back up now if you please’.)

So, perhaps inexperienced is the right word, but in the wrong context. Crowley is experienced, is experience incarnate, really. One couldn’t live for as long as he has, see as much as he has seen, without picking up a few things along the way. But, he is not practiced and that makes all the difference in the world.

Not that any of this has any bearing on our tale.

One need not be experienced to Nanny the future AntiChrist (more formally known as the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness) after all.

Really, one needed only a relatively robust CV and a few Miracled letters of recommendation praising one’s ability to both foster a caring and warm environment and also not take any shit from one’s charges.

“Naaanny!” The wheedling voice tears Crowley from her thoughts as young Warlock, her current and only charge, manages to hit just the right level of high-pitched whine and extended vowels to set any human’s nerve on edge (it’s a skill they've been practicing for the last few months and Crowley has never been more proud).

“Yes, my little Adversary[4]?” She asks, scooping the boy up into her arms and settling him against her slim hip. The four year old wraps his arms around her as far as he can, gripping tightly with the hand not currently occupied with holding his current favorite plush toy (a little plague doctor with bright yellow beads for eyes and a soft felt beak).

“I don’t want to go to Merca,” he whines, pressing his forehead into her side and mussing the hair she’d she carefully brushed into place not ten minutes earlier. _Good,_ she thinks, pleased beyond what feels appropriate by his disregard for her efforts.

“America,” she tells him, carefully enunciating the word in an accent that matches his parents. He’ll need to be adaptable in the future, she’d hate him to come to any trouble because he sounds too British or too American. So, they alternate and the child is quick and clever and always picks up on which accent he should be using at any given moment.

“America,” he repeats, carefully over-enunciating each sound, “I don’t wanna go there.”

She resettles him and leans over to pick up the little basket of supplies she’d prepared earlier in the day.

“You must,” she says as they leave the playroom. “Your father is a very important man, the most important of all,” she pauses and allows a thin smile to curl her lips, “Of all _men_ , on this Earth or Below it. He’s been called away and you need to go with him. You need to learn all about the way the world works, my little King.”

Warlock pouts, but doesn’t argue anymore. They reach the large kitchen in good time and Crowley situates herself atop one of the tall barstools that line the staff breakfast bar, settling Warlock into her lap and the basket of supplies on the marble counter before them.

“Now, what did you want to color?” she asks. He’d woken her early that morning, all bright eyes and the little smile she can’t admit to herself that she adores with the sort of unselfish, undemonic love she’s not meant to feel. He had been going on and on about some picture he planned to draw and how he needed red paper and his crayons and maybe she could cut some shapes for him, please?

“S’a supize,” Warlock says, very seriously.

Crowley has to hide another smile[5] as she corrects him, “Surprise, little one.”

“Yeah, that,” he says and carefully selects a taupe crayon from the box. She watches as he begins to draw a clumsy square on one side of the pale pink paper he’s chosen from the pile. When he’s reaching for another crayon she hears the door to the kitchen open and looks up.

Thaddeus and Harriet Dowling employ a fairly large staff, as is expected for politicians of their station and relative international import, so Crowley doesn’t know all the guards but she does recognize the young maid leading the men into the kitchen. Nadya is sweet, too sweet for this sort of work, she’d be eaten alive in any household that wasn’t playing host to a particularly workers-rights disposed demon and a soft-hearted angel with a fondness for people in the service industry. As she crosses the threshold she looks up and gives Crowley the biggest smile she can manage.

“Miss Ashtoreth!” She chirps, accent thick and eyes alight, “I did not expect you, ah,” she pauses, searching for the correct word, before continuing, triumphant, “to be here still.”

“Oh no,” Crowley says, “I won’t be traveling to America.” She ruffles Warlock’s hair, running her fingers through the silken strands. That shampoo Aziraphale recommended really is working wonders, she’ll need to tell him to thank his barber.

“Oh, I did not realize,” Nadya says. She glances to the men on either side of her, “Oh, I am so rude. This is Smith, and ah, Gavin, yes?” The taller of the two men nods.

“Yes’m,” he says, his voice a low drawl. He’s clearly American, which isn’t as unusual in this household as it might be elsewhere. “We’re the new guards. We’ll be getting the cameras and other additional security measures set up while the Ambassador and his family are away.”

That’s the real reason for their sudden, week-long vacation, Crowley knows. There have been a number of threats that the American government is taking rather seriously. Normally she thinks she’d have a little fun with them during the set up, but something dark and slimy has wrapped around her heart at the idea of anyone harming Warlock when she’s not there or when she’s asleep. If a few cameras or motion sensors prevent that then she’s perfectly willing to forgo her usual mischief.

“A pleasure,” she says, inclining her head towards them, “I expect we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other.”

They nod back and turn away, rapidly becoming absorbed in the information Nadya is giving them about the way the kitchen works when the family is in residence. Crowley watches them for another few minutes before turning back to Warlock.

He’s pulled the paper in close, so she can’t see what he’s drawing past his bowed head. But, she can sense his concentration and his tiny hand is gripping the crayon (a dark grey now) tightly.

“Nanny?” he asks after a few quiet moments broken only by the low murmur of Gavin or Smith asking questions.

“Yes?”

“Will you cut some paper for me?” He’s not allowed to use sharp objects yet. She’s told Beelzebub that it’s because it would be too suspicious if his self-healing capabilities manifest too early, but really it’s because Crowley thinks that if she has to see her boy bleeding then she might lose her mind.

“Of course,” she says. “What am I cutting?”

She takes up a pair of safety scissors and a piece of dark red construction paper.

“A heart!” he says, “A real one, like you showed me in the book! Not one of those silly ones that Brother France told me about.”

“Brother Francis,” she says, careful to enunciate the second half of his name, “has some silly ideas. But, what do we do with those ideas?”

“Tell you about them and then forget them!” Warlock says, tiny voice filled with pride.

“That’s right, my love,” she tells him. Then, after a glance to see if any of the other three are looking (they aren’t), drops a butterfly quick kiss to his hair.

She cuts the heart out and lays it on the counter for Warlock. He takes it without thanking her and her heart swells with pride.

Soon, all too soon, the clock on the wall is ticking over to the quarter hour and it’s time to take Warlock to his parents. Nearly time to bid farewell.

“Are you ready to go?” She asks. “A new continent to conquer awaits you.”

“I guess,” Warlock mutters. He sets his crayon down and clumsily folds the anatomically correct heart she’d cut in half, hiding his drawing inside.

“What have I said about guessing?”

“Not to,” he answers, “Anything I say is right ‘cause I say it. But, I don’t understand what that-”

“You will,” Crowley tells him as she stands. “Now, how are we giving this to?” She taps one carefully manicured fingernail against the paper.

Warlock mumbles something into her chest.

“What was that? Remember, generals project their voices.”

He tilts his head up, meeting her gaze as best as he can through the glasses. “You,” he says and her own heart clenches. “You said it’s valemtimes and people give hearts.”

She’d told him the story of a rather brutal reenactment of the original Valentine's Day massacre that had ended with the rebel leaders’ hearts laid before the king they had sought to depose. This... The cardstock under her fingernail feels like the farthest thing in the world from that. She can’t sense positive emotion, not the way Aziraphale can, but there’s a curious lack of negative ones coming from the paper. She wonders what fills that void, what he was feeling as he drew the picture inside.

“Oh,” she manages after a long minute. “Well, thank you then.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” he says and it’s all she can do to hold him tight to her as she exits the kitchen through the service entrance. There’s a small convoy of black SUVs awaiting them, surrounded by men in black suits all busily working at loading bags into the vehicles or scanning their surroundings. The one she recognizes as the head of security[6] is standing very close to Thaddeus, their heads canted together as they look at something on a tablet computer.

When she sees then, Harriet hands her purse off to one of her aides and crosses the gravel driveway.

“Good, Miss Ashtoreth, we were just about to leave,” she says and Crowley is once again grateful for her sunglasses because they clearly weren’t. They wouldn’t be leaving for at least another hour. She knows because she had a rather large hand in shaping how large groups of men work and she’d rather skimped on the ‘efficiency’ bits of the equation.

“Of course,” Crowley says, “He’s had his breakfast and I packed a few of his favorite books in the carry-on.” She shrugs the shoulder not currently hosting a toddler’s head to indicate the bag that hung from it. “He’s not yet had his nap, so he should sleep the entire way to the airport.”

“Great,” Harriet says, though she doesn’t sound terribly interested in what Crowley is saying.

Crowley sighs. She hates this part. Warlock is a delightful boy (despite her best efforts really) and she’s not sure his parents have ever noticed. She leans down and sets Warlock on the ground. Neither Harriet nor Thaddeus has been interested in carrying him since he began walking. He’s steady on his feet, but takes her hand anyway, gripping as tightly as his little fingers can manage.

She crouches, so her face will be level with his.

“I don’t want to go without you,” he says. His lower lip is wobbling slightly and his eyes shine, but he’s clearly trying very hard to keep the tears back. Crowley knows how he feels. They’ve never- she’s never been away from him overnight, not since she was hired.

“Oh dearest,” she says and she only uses that word because she can see that Harriet is tapping away at her phone, oblivious to the world. “You’ll be back before you know it and you’ll have so many stories to tell me about your trip. You’ll forget all about me by tomorrow, I promise.” Briefly, hauntingly, she considered making that promise a reality, but discards the thought without really taking it seriously. She can’t, won’t, do that to him.

“But,” he says, and before he can say anything more car doors are slamming and the men around them are moving with a bit more urgency.

“Warlock!” Thaddeus is suddenly there, booming voice and spider silk thin smile pasted across his face. “There you are, boy!”

“Hullo dad,” Warlock mumbles and Crowley’s heart aches for the smiling, cheerful little boy that had woken her that morning.

“Well, let’s get a move on, daylight’s burning.” Thaddeus claps his hands and turns on his heel and starts for the cars.

Crowley encourages Warlock to follow him, her hand pressed to his back. He glances at her and his father one last time before sighing and nodding.

“Byebye, Nanny,” he whispers.

She stands and watches as he follows his father. Beside her, Harriet is still tapping on her phone.

“Anything fun planned on your vacation?” she asks without looking up.

“Ah, no,” Crowley says. It’s the truth. She honestly hasn’t planned past this moment. It’s odd, to think of being free to spend her days as she wants after two and a half years of being at the whims and needs of a small human. “Nothing exciting as such.”

“Hmm,” Harriet hums. “Well, do be back by Wednesday.” She glances up and a little smirk curls the corner of her mouth, making her look far more likeable than the blank, politician’s wife facade had managed. “A week. That’s enough time for a fling, and it is Valentines. You should find yourself a man and let that hair down a bit, Miss Ashtoreth.”

Crowley opens her mouth. Closes it again.

She wants to smirk and imply that _of course_ she’ll do that because that’s what Nanny Ashtoreth would do, but can’t because her gaze has snagged on Warlock once more.

He’s caught up to Thaddeus and, as Crowley watches, reaches up for his father’s hand. He’s got a look of concentration on his face as he rises up onto his tiptoes. Thaddeus looks down at him when he feels the boy’s fingers brush his own.

“None of that,” he scolds, pulling his hand away. “I won’t have that namby-pamby nonsense, boy.” Then, he turns away, answering the call of one of the security officers. Warlock doesn’t move and doesn’t look back at Crowley.

It’s a good thing, Crowley tries to tell herself, it’ll make him strong. Bitter. Ready to fight and to win.

She can’t finish the thoughts even in the privacy of her mind because all she can see is the shuttered, blank face of the little boy whose father has just told him off for seeking comfort when he’s afraid.

She’s always been good at lying to herself, but she’s finding it harder and harder these days.

She says something along the lines of a _goodbye_ to Harriet and leaves. There’s a sudden overfull sensation scratching at the back of her eyes and she can’t stand to be surrounded by so many humans.

She stalks back through to the kitchen. She needs to clean up the art supplies and straighten the playroom before she can go- before she can spend the week in her Mayfair flat, watching terrible TV and resisting the urge to sleep away the last few years before the apocalypse. She pauses when she sees the folded heart. When she touches the rough paper the burning, itching sensation spreads, ticking down the sides of her face. She takes it up and tucks it into her waistcoat, on the left side where her corporation’s heart is.

Crowley glances around and, when she’s sure the coast is clear, clicks her fingers to clear the rest of the mess in the kitchen and playroom. She can’t stand to be here any longer. She sighs and scrubs one hand down her face, feeling how her nails have gone slightly more pointed than they began the day.

She’s tired.

Just as she decides it’s worth the transportation headache to just Miracle herself to her flat she hears a thump from the hallway outside the kitchen. There’s always someone around in this house but something about that noise rubs her the wrong way. She slinks to the door and pushes it open, peering around the frame.

Dirk-Gerk is standing in the hallway, Nadya pressed between him and the wall. He’s not touching her, but he close and she’s holding herself very still and suddenly the itching, hot sensation is overpowering.

Nadya likes her tea sweet and hot and, on cold night, she indulges in a cinnamon stick to stir in the honey. She always takes time to arrange Warlock’s stuffed animals in new and exciting ways when cleaning his room.

She’s only just found a flat of her own and stopped worrying about being sent back to the terrible place she escaped.

Her eyes are wide and _she’s scared._

Crowley is not a forgiving beast, she never has been.

She steps out of the doorway and snaps again. This time, instead of the scraps and mess of a child’s enthusiasm being sent away, it’s a man. She doesn’t pay attention to where she deposits him, only caring enough to ensure it’s not the middle of an active volcano or the ocean. She doesn’t want to think about Aziraphale’s face if she caused the man to die.

But, the middle of the Amazon is fair game.

As soon as he’s gone she snaps again, soothing the memory in Nadya’s mind. She hates it, hates taking anything away, but there’s no other way to ensure she doesn’t think on a person vanishing before her very eyes.

“Nadya,” Crowley manages to say in something approximating good cheer, “I’d thought you would be long gone.”

Nadya blinks, the haze of a Miracle clearing from her eyes. “I, uh, I forgot my purse,” she says.

“Hmm,” Crowley nods. “Best be on, then.”

Then, she turns away. She can’t hold onto it much longer. It’s writhing, aching, twisting.

Warlock’s carefully blank face, Nadya’s naked fear, and her own aching, too soft heart and she can feel the press of scales against the inside of her skin. She needs to be alone, to be away from humans.

She considers her flat once again before dismissing it. She actually rather likes her current crop of plants and knows if she finds any faults in this mood none of them will survive.

The bookshop is also out of the question. Aziraphale will have already left for his own week of relaxation and Crowley can’t stomach the idea of seeing him when she’s like this.

But... Her steps stutter to a stop. The gardener’s cottage will be empty.

Yes. Good, that will do nicely. Isolated and warm, she can rage and seethe and expunge this terrible feeling before going back to her flat and sleeping it all off. Aziraphale will understand her canceling their dinner[7].

He always does.

With this plan in mind, Crowley turns towards the cottage.

She makes it there in record time, which is lucky given that she can feel the bits of human unspooling from her as she goes. The angry snake at her core is aching, hissing, biting at her own ribcage and its all she can do to raise her arm and slam the door to the cottage open.

She’s expecting a darkened room and the smell of rich earth and vanillin.

She’s not expecting the lights to be on or to hear a startled yelp.

She’s not expecting the door to come to a sudden stop against a very solid, very alarmed angel.

* * *

Footnotes:

1Dear reader, not to contradict our hero, but it should be known that any and all success that the young Isabella experienced was due entirely to her own wiles and cleverness. Crowley’s advice was, more often than not, of the sort, “Men like nopales, they’re rabid for them. Give them nopales[2].”[return to text]

2Crowley was confused on two points; first, that men in general like nopales and not one man-shaped being in particular, and second, that an Italian woman in the year 1534 would have the faintest inkling what in the wide world nopales were. [return to text]

3And Hellfire below, but that’s a sin on his part, to _want_ such tender things. In his weaker moments he tried to tell himself it’s alright, good even, because demons are meant to sin, right? Yeah. He never manages to believe himself, either. [return to text]

4Please note that Crowley does not intend the possessive pronoun ‘my’ to mean that Warlock is, or ever could be, her opponent. Rather, she is using ‘Adversary’ in the titular sense as she believes Warlock to be The Adversary of Heaven and Humanity and All That Is Good and Righteous On This World. [return to text]

5She finds she’s doing far too much of that these days. It’s just... Warlock is a delight and she genuinely enjoys the time spent with him. She’s never been able to really raise a child like this before, for all that she’s always enjoyed their company. None has ever felt like _hers_ the way he does.[return to text]

6His name is Dirk or Brick or Gerk or something else appropriately ham-brained and American. She’s never quite got the hang of American naming conventions. [return to text]

7Or rather, he would if she bothered to tell him. In fact, Crowley’s current plan is to just miss dinner and apologize with an obscenely rare bottle of wine when she wakes from her fury nap. [return to text]


	2. Plinthios Brokhos

Aziraphale’s day is going about as well as any of his days have gone recently. It had begun as was typical; he’d spent the night in his plush armchair, working his way through the stack of books he’d fetched on his last visit to the bookshop, when the clock struck half-five he set down the slim volume of poetry he’d been reading and stood, stretching his arms high above his head. He’d made a pot of tea and drunk a bit too much, sending a vibrating thrill through the nerves of his corporation. Now he’s standing in the tiny kitchen, waiting for the caravan of SUVs and security personnel to leave so he can dispense with this ridiculous disguise and be himself for a few days. 

He’ll never admit it aloud, because it’s not what they do, but Crowley was right. It’s far harder pretending to be someone he’s not that he ever anticipated. Every day the Brother Francis façade feels a little more constricting, a little farther from the truth of him, and every day he waits a few more moments before snapping his fingers and donning the hated thing. Today he’d nearly decided to not wear it at all and simply hide until anyone who might see him has gone, but the lingering anxiety about being caught out by passersby and forced to Miracle up an explanation forced his hand. Besides, they agreed before they began this plan to use as few Miracles as possible[1], so he’s obliged to walk from the grounds as a human might rather than simply appearing back in the bookshop. 

So, he waits and he casts his awareness out and doesn’t try to hide the smile when he recognizes the particular brand of frustration from the humans that can only be caused by something Crowley has done. Then, when he feels the number of minds in the immediate area sharply decrease, he gathers up the books he wishes to switch out and starts towards the cottage door. If he can get these books reshelved quickly, he thinks he might have time to sit in the sunshine at his desk, surrounded by his books and the slow scratch of a record turning, and bask in being himself again, unobserved and alone. The mere idea is enough to relax his tense shoulders incrementally. 

“Hello, dear,” he says, smiling up at her. Crowley isn’t normally that much taller than him, perhaps a few grains of barley at most, no that isn’t right, what measurement system are the humans using these days? Surely not hands? He shakes the thought away as unimportant, all that matters is that right now, in her heels, no matter how practical they might be, Crowley is noticeably taller than normal. It sends a thrill down his spine. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I’d thought we were meant to meet at the bookshop later? I was rather looking forward to doing a bit of reshelving and...” He trails off when he notices Crowley glancing behind him to the window where the curtains are drawn tightly closed. 

“Hmm,” she hums into the silence that has fallen. Aziraphale does so wish he’d had time to do away with this terrible disguise. It chafes against him. He knows it's not attractive, not in the way that he normally feels. It’s not that he thinks his usual form is the belle of any given ball, more that it feels comfortable and _his._ He’s lived in it and fought in it and helped people and, sometimes, hurt people in it. More than all that, it's the body that has sat in the backroom of his bookshop and become terrifically drunk with Crowley and it's the body that he’s caught Crowley watching, hunger filling those wonderful eyes. 

“Did Warlock and the rest get off alright?” he asks, carefully. 

Crowley hums again. She’s swaying back and forth a bit, her eyes tracking across the planes of the room in slow sweeps. “Yes,” she finally dredges up. Her fingers are tapping along the smooth leather of the belt cinched tight around her slim waist.

“Oh good,” Aziraphale tries to force cheer into his voice, tries to tell Crowley she’s safe here, that she need not be on guard any longer. “The lad does so love to spend time with his parents.” He bustles across the little room to the hotplate on the countertop. He plugs it in and fills the kettle with water from the sink before turning back to Crowley with a smile. “I hope they end up taking him to the zoo, he’s been so excited about that since you taught him about birds being reptiles.” The kettle boils. It’s too fast, but really, he can’t be expected to wait for it to happen the natural way, there are only so many minutes in eternity after all. He pours the water into two waiting cups, watching with a smile as the loose leaves uncurl and begin to color the water. The gentle scent of bergamot and orange blossom fills the tiny room and when he glances over his shoulder he sees Crowley’s fingers still against her waist. 

“Incidentally, dearest,” he says, handing one of the mugs to Crowley, “I’m not sure you were right about that? I’m fairly sure reptiles are the scaley ones.” 

For the first time since she threw the cottage door open, Crowley doesn’t look like she’s about to bolt. She snorts inelegantly. 

“I know what reptiles are,” she snaps and she doesn’t sound too annoyed so Aziraphale decides to count it as a win[2]. 

“It’s just, well, you _know_ I was stationed outside Avian Development for a while and, while feathers aren’t mine, I think they’re a bit diff–”

He’s cut off by Crowley making an inarticulate noise, somewhere halfway between a word and a hiss and when he looks at her over the rim of his cup the slim measure of peace she'd gained is gone, leaving a wretched, jagged tension in its wake. 

“Crowley,” he asks, slowly, “Are you quite alright, my dear?” 

Then, before he realizes what’s happened, Crowley is very close, pressing her torso close to his and his back against the pillar in the center of the room. He gasps and tastes her perfume and the tea leaves on her exhale. Her pupils are blown wide, leaving only a slim halo of brilliant yellow around the very rim, as they rake across his face. 

“Crowley?” he manages. She doesn’t respond. 

The _something_ beneath her skin is writhing, twisting in on itself. She’s only barely holding herself still, the frantic desire to sway back and forth pressing on her feet. Aziraphale is so close she can feel his cologne on the roof of her mouth, spicy and floral and tinged with something so distinctly _Aziraphale_ that she wants to devour whole. 

Her eyes linger on his lips. She’s pressed forward, trapping him against the pillar and now she realizes that he’s leaning away from her, that his eyes are wide with shock and something else, something closer to primal. She scents the air again and tastes the bitter tang of fear. 

Crowley has never taken anything that wasn’t freely given. It’s a point of pride. Other demons might steal to cause strife, but Crowley had only ever planned to steal one thing and the angel before her stopped her before that was necessary. Saved her from herself. 

He was always doing that. 

She swallows down another perfect gasp of air, promising herself that she’ll remember how he tastes from the far away, then she blinks. She won’t be like those men, can’t be like those men, she refuses. 

But, she also can’t quite bring herself to retreat. She wants him, wants to feel his chapped lips and then tease him because even if he’s rationing Miracles, chapped lips don’t happen unless you let them. She wants to ask ‘may I kiss you?’ and be sure that his answer will be ‘yes’ or ‘of course’ or ‘always, my dear, you know you need not ask.’ She cannot move any further away and she cannot move forward and slowly, her ability to see the world clearly begins to fade away, narrowing to the way Aziraphale’s lips are slowly tilting into a smile. 

Then, twin blazing brands caress her face and Aziraphale is touching her, taking her face in his hands. The heat is grounding, pulls her attention in and she’s able to focus a bit. As she watches, the facade of Brother Francis melts away, vanishing as if it never existed at all. 

Idly, she notes that his lips are still chapped. It’s hopelessly endearing. 

She traces her way up his familiar and recently infrequently seen, features. There’s the puckish upturn to his nose, the round curve of his cheeks, the way his skin folds at the corners of his eyes when he smiles. There’s a little brown dot on the sclera of his left eye, just outside the dark blue border of the iris. She’s always adored that dot. 

He says something but Crowley doesn’t catch it, too absorbed in her study of his features. His fingers tighten slighted on her face. He shifts and she sees it, sees the flames of need that are turning her chest to charcoal reflected in his eyes. 

She kisses him. 

As soon as their lips meet, he’s pushing back, gripping her face tightly, pulling her in and it’s all awkward lips pressed against teeth and Crowley is discovering that she might not need to breathe, but her chest feels hollowed out without it. She feels Aziraphale’s mouth shift and the tip of his tongue traces the seam of her lips. She can’t help the ragged noise that escapes, though it’s muffled by her closed mouth. 

The tongue is back, probing at her and she’s filled with the visceral memory of watching Aziraphale eat oysters in Rome, crème pâtissière in Lyon, a precious orange in the Trenches, a thousand meals shared together and she’d watched him enjoy each and every morsel, watched him lave the last remnants from his spoon, eyes catching her own and sparkling with delight. She allows her eyes to open a sliver and the look on his face is bliss. 

She can’t take it, can’t tolerate being the target of such adoration when she feels so very wretched at her core, when the scales press so close to her human flesh. She pulls away, discovering as she does so that her hand (the traitors that they are) have migrated to his hips. 

Crowley releases him. Steps away. 

Aziraphale looks at her and she can barely stand it, because he’s got kiss-red lips and half-lidded eyes and she feels lower than the serpent-skin she’s tried so hard to shed. 

“I-,” she pauses and clears her throat. “I apologize.” She pulls her gloves from her belt and slips them on before reaching up to straighten her hat back into place (had his hands been in her hair? It’s so mussed, but she’d not been able to focus on anything but the taste of him, the burnt sugar ozone of his Divinity on her lips. Her own tongue aches to taste it again.). She turns towards the door, canting her head so she can still see him from the corner of her eye. 

“I understand if- if you do not wish to meet for dinner.” It hurts to say, the imagined burn of holy water down her throat. “You can enjoy the time away from here without me infringing or bothering or- Well, I just- I know you don’t-” She doesn’t want to say it aloud, to make it real in that way. 

“I don’t what?” Aziraphale says into the silence that falls between them. He hasn’t moved from where she pushed him against the pillar, hasn’t tried to straighten his own rumpled clothes. 

And damn him, he’s going to force her to actualize what they both already know to be true. 

“I know you don’t feel the same way I do.” She closes her eyes as she says it, unable to stand the way the bright sun spills into the room and lights Aziraphale in an entirely human halo. 

There’s a long moment of silence, broken only when Aziraphale sucks in a sharp breath and says, “I’ll thank you not to tell me what I feel, dearest.” 

Crowley sways, focusing on the memory of the door frame, on the regular thick-and-thin pattern of the wood grain beneath decades of stain and paint. 

“I thought,” she starts and stops. She tries again, “You never ssssaid-” When she stops this time it’s because she’s suddenly remembered why she came here in the first place. The scales that she’d been able to ignore escape her control, forcing their way through her delicate skin in rough patches. Worse than that, the sucking black hole at the core of her wails, shrieks, reaches out and tries to claw her corporation down and in, wanting to leave behind nothing more than the coiling, twisting serpent at the end of the world. 

“I- I can’t,” she manages to say, and she moves towards the door. She can't weather the storm here, can’t be so vulnerable when she’s not alone. She’ll have to try and leave the ground behind and make it to her flat. Plants be damned. 

* * *

Footnotes

1He makes an exception for gifting the Miracle of Life to Plants, because they will not stop dying on him and he refuses to admit that he’s been defeated by some cellulose and chlorophyll.[return to text]

2Please note, dear reader, that Aziraphale is not in fact correct. Birds are reptiles by any metric of phylogenetic classification. Crowley, being the better part of a reptile herself, is well aware of this relationship.[return to text]


	3. Pleiades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all she wrote folks! i hope you enjoy the last part of this <3

She’s just managed to place one hand on the door handle when warm fingers wrap around her other wrist, pulling her back and around. A little huff of annoyance puffs from her, even now, when she’s so desperate to be alone, to spare him seeing what she’s trying so valiantly to hide, Aziraphale goes against the grain of what she expects. He’s always doing that, no matter what she thinks of him or what he will do, he surprises her.

Like now, by all rights he should let her go, should never have stayed her departure in the first place. But, he’s holding her tightly, his arms wrapped around her torso in what she’s only just now realizing is a hug.

Aziraphale is hugging her. The very idea sends a shiver down her spine and she can feel a few more scales burst into being at the base of her spine.

“Let me go,” she whispers. He doesn’t move and Crowley realizes she doesn’t feel trapped, no matter that she certainly isn’t strong enough to free herself of him, were he to decide to hold her against her will.

“My dear,” Aziraphale says against her neck and it’s too much. He’s just implied, as much as said, that he feels _something_ for her. The very idea has turned the bedrock beneath her to sand.

“Please, Aziraphale.” Oh how Crowley hates the way her voice sounds- pathetic, weak. She sounds afraid and she sounds sad and those are things she never wanted to be in front of him. He deserves only her brightest emotions, and if she cannot give him those, then he at least deserves her strongest ones. She can’t always find good cheer, but wry bitterness is easy at hand.

As soon as the syllables slip from her lips he’s released her.

“Apologies.” And he sounds a little sad himself now. “It’s just, well, my dear I love you so very much and I thought you couldn’t- ah, I mean, I thought you didn’t feel the same as I did.” He rubs one hand along the back of his sun-darkened neck. Working in the garden has been good for him, Crowley thinks, almost inanely. He looks a little like the angel he’d been when they met in the first Garden, all those centuries ago.

She’s just as undone by the tan on his neck and the sun on his ears as she’d been when she was nothing more than a snake play-acting at having a human form and whiling away her days, well, whiling and staring up at the most beautiful being she’d ever seen.

She’s never stopped.

And.

And he hadn’t thought she _could_ love him?

“Wh- How- First of all,” Crowley sputters. “You didn’t thi- Of course I do-” She can’t find the words, can’t string them together because there are 6000 years of confessions building up in her chest and they’re all fighting to escape her at once, but she can’t think past ‘couldn’t’ to set them free.

“I’m sorry that you had to endure a foul beast loving you,” she finally manages to snarl, turning once more on her heel. “I’ll not darken your doorway again.”

She tries to leave, but cannot. The hand is back around her wrist. Not tight, not confining, a simple request that she stay.

She’s never been able to deny him anything. Never wanted to.

“That’s not what I mean,” Aziraphale tells her, his own voice a bit faint. “It’s honestly a bit embarrassing.”

“I’m _so bloody sorry_ my feelings embarrass you!” Crowley yanks her hand away from him.

“No! Crowley, dearest, please listen to me.” Aziraphael casts about until his eyes land on the small sitting area. “Sit with me? There’s no reason for you to leave, we can talk about this, can’t we?”

Could they?

Crowley isn’t so sure they can. She was sad and angry before she entered the cottage and it had nothing at all to do with Aziraphale. Those feelings haven’t gone away, but now they’re wrapped in a thin film of hurt because she’s never really wanted him to love her back but she’s always hoped he could tell how she felt.

“Crowley?” She blinks and sees Aziraphale settled in the arm chair, knees pressed firmly together and eyebrows quirked hopefully. She sighs and throws herself down on the loveseat.

“Demons don’t talk about our feelings, angel,” she snaps. “It’s part of the hiring bonus.”

“Hmm, I rather think that might be the reason for all the murder and chaos, my dear.”

And she kind of hates him, because she’s _angry_ and _sad_ and _hurt_ and now, well, she also kind of wants to laugh at the mental image of Hastur encountering cognitive behavioral therapy.

Maybe that's what she'll get Dagon next secret santa[1].

They fall into a comfortable silence, but Crowley cannot let it be. The scale still itch away under her skin, pressing and poking and bothering her. She’s been so cooped up, so restrained for so long, she can’t hold it back much longer.

She opens her mouth to say this to Aziraphale (and perhaps to apologize for her behavior as well), but what comes out instead is, “I’ve always loved you.”

Well.

There went all hope of recovering any of this, now didn’t it? Just watch as the opportunity to recover any semblance of friendship or ease from the rubble fizzled and died.

Bloody fuckin perfect, Crowley.

Worse than all that, it seems her mouth isn’t quite done running away with her (she’s always been aces at digging graves).

“It’s true.” the words taste like absinthe on her lips. “One look and I was toasst, more toasst, I wass already toasst, you know, what with-” She pauses and watches in distant horror as her own hand makes an arcing imitation of the Fall. Aziraphale does not look amused. “That. Anyway. I sssaw you and I wasss gone and I’ve never been able to rid mysssself of it. I tried, you have to believe me. I tried sssso hard.” Her sibilants are getting away with her now and she forces her jaw to clamp down, catching the words that still want to bubble forth.

“Why?” Aziraphale asks, his voice very loud in the silence that has fallen around them. Crowley has no clue what he means, but she’s not spent the better part of the last few millenia bluffing her way through quarterly reports for nothing.

“Because you don’t deserve it,” she whispers, grateful to have kept her voice vaguely human. Aziraphale flinches anyway and Crowley is more confused than ever.

“I’m quite aware,” he says stiffly, “But, I’d rather thought you’d not agree with them on the matter.”

“Who?”

“The archangels of course, my dear.”

Crowley blinks once, twice, and then a third time for good measure because she realizes that she’s not blinked in quite a while and her eyes were aching a bit.

“What the blessed fuck do they have to do with anything?” she snaps.

“Nothing at all really, only I’d not thought you would agree with them vis a vis me being lov-, er, likable.”

“As if I’d ever agree with those bleeding arse-”

“But, you just have?”

“Haven’t.”

“Now really, that’s rather childish, don’t you think?” Aziraphale sounds genuinely hurt and understanding overwhelms Crowley. He thinks- Oh somebody, Aziraphale thinks it’s _him_ who’s the problem.

“I have not,” Crowley hissed, “You don’t dessserve to Fall becausssse I love you and you were foolish enough to love me back.”

Aziraphale is still, not even his chest rising and falling in the facsimile of breath.

Crowley’s body aches, because she wants to surge across the space between them and wrap Aziraphale up and hide him away so none of the Unworthy in Heaven can ever touch him again and she’s scared to move at all. She’s been hiding it, holding it back for so many years and she’s afraid if she unspools now she’ll not be able to wrestle it back before the Dowlings return and she’s meant to be the buttoned up Nanny once more.

She’s still sitting there trying to decide when Aziraphale reaches out and takes up her hand once more. He stands from the armchair and takes the two steps needed to cross the space between them.

“It seems,” he says rubbing his left thumb down the outside of hers, “that we’ve both been operating under some rather grave misunderstandings.”

He pulls her to her feet and Crowley goes willingly.

“Have we?” she whispers.

He nods and tugs her away from the sitting area towards the little nook with the- Oh. Her legs go rather weak when she realizes that the bed really is the only thing he could possibly be leading them towards. She staggers and catches herself on the nearest bookshelf.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks. His hand is still in hers and now she can feel the warmth of him once more as he’s stepped closer to her.

“Ngk,” she manages. Her tongue doesn’t quite feel human anymore. Worse, the scales that have threatened ever since she watched little Warlock bundled away are racing along her arms and legs.

Aziraphale’s mouth is pulled in a tight little smile and then he’s turned entirely to face her, pushing her against the bookcase in a mirror image of the position she’d had him in before. The air she’s drawing in little gasps is cool across her lips, it tastes like him on her tongue and she wants more, more, more, more-

“Is this alright, my dear?” Aziraphale asks as he leans in and places a gentle kiss on her racing pulse. Her breath hitches and starts and it’s all she can do to nod. “Perfect,” he breathes, his lips brushing against her as he speaks.

“Aziraphale,” she manages past her shock and her uncooperative tongue and the thoughts that swirl around her.

The only response she receives is a low ‘hm’ as he traces the veins in her neck with kisses, each overlaying the last and lighting her ablaze. Surely it’s not meant to feel like this, she thinks, she’s helped so many people learn the art of Love in theory over the years and she’s never prepared them for this.

How could she have? How could anyone be prepared for the way it would feel to have one’s flesh nipped and sucked and then tenderly kissed, to feel the air cold against the wet skin left behind.

Aziraphale’s right hand moves around her body to brush against her breast and he pauses in his ministrations. “May I?” he asks, his eyes black as night through his lashes as he gazes at her. She nods again, this time so vigorously that she knocks her head against the bookshelf behind her and the pain is so sudden and so silly that she can’t help but laugh. Aziraphale cups the back of her head with his left hand and soothes away the bruise, laughing along with her. The gentle pulse of a healing Miracle, so casually used on someone like her, and the way his eyes crinkle with his laughter drains all the remaining tension from her body.

Snakes aren’t meant to have legs and suddenly neither is she.

Aziraphale isn’t expecting her to go boneless the way she does but he’s always been quick on his feet. He slips one leg between hers and lefts, holding her suspended and tight against the bookshelves.

It’s dizzyingly, blindingly hot. Crowley makes a noise into Aziraphale’s mouth and only then realizes that he’s kissing her once more. His tongue chases the words she can’t find back into her mouth, flicking against her own and she’s lost. She’s wanted this for so long, though she’d never dared think on the shape of it before. Even if she had, she would not have been able to describe the way the pit of her stomach clenches as he takes even more of her weight, shifting so that his thigh is pressed tight between the apex of her thighs. He’s stealing the breath from her lungs even as he gives her his and she’s so caught up in the delight, the wonder, of feeling the tongue that has called her ‘my dear’ for so many year tracing the length of her own serpentine one that she quite loses grasp on the physical boundaries of who she’s meant to be.

* * *

There’s a brief, terrible moment where Crowley inhabits a human body experiencing pleasures she never thought she could and also a coiling snake lost in the cold and dark, and also innumerable wings and charred feathers and the collapsing heart of a dying star, drawing ever more fuel in from all around her, hungry, hungry-

She’s more things than even she can comprehend.

She tenses, coils tighter, feathers and skin and scales shivering against the vacuum around her.

She’s not even a physical form anymore, though her mind rebels against that idea. She’s radiation given thought, nestled in the delicate place where the strings of the Universe sing and harmonize with the streaming particles of God’s First Thought.

It’s too warm and it’s too cold and she knows at her very core she’s not meant to be here anymore, that she lost this right when she asked too many Questions.

Crowley tries to tuck herself in, to wrap herself up and down, to compress herself with enough material that she might one day shine again, even faintly.

She’s reaching out into the abyss, desperately scrambling for any brush of herself[2]. Her fingers, claws, nothingness where her legs and hands were stolen from her in the Garden, all come up empty.

She’s alone.

.

.

.

.

Then, she’s not.

She doesn’t have eyes here, not really, but in the time it takes to blink she is surrounded by warmth. There’s a flame licking along the borders of her, hints of something much larger and more powerful than she has ever been. Tentatively, she reaches out and touches it, prepared to dart away should it prove to be dangerous.

She's met with all-consuming, overwhelming love.

_Aziraphale?_

_Hello, my heart._ His voice is not the voice that she's used to, not the gentle English cadence she's spent so long chasing after. It's _him_ , in every way that she'd never before been able to quantify or define.

She lets herself reach out again, trailing the very tips of her feathers through his fire. He shudders around her, pleasure singing through what little empty space remains between them. She's very distantly aware that they still inhabit human forms, that his hands are running up and down her body, tracing the lines of her through the seams of her clothes and his mouth is locked to hers. But that seems far less important than the love she can feel here.

She gets now why he'd been so surprised to learn she loved him. This is what he felt for her and she's never known. How could her paltry offering-

_No._

She ceases her explorations, afraid of having crossed some invisible line.

_Crowley, your love is not less-than._ Aziraphale's words are tongue of fire through the very core of her, burning and wonderful and she keens for want of more. _We were simply speaking different dialects._

_What?_ She manages.

She gets a surge of her own _indulgence_ and _devotion_ and _protection_ reflected back at her, intermingled with Aziraphale’s _amusement_ and _forbearance_ and _acceptance_. Only, now she recognizes them both for what they are; love, shown in a thousand interlocking ways over six thousand years and never quite parsed correctly by the other because they were looking for the wrong thing all along.

_Really?_

As soon as she feels his assent, she’s spreading outward, allowing her scales and her feathers to touch every part of him that she can reach even as he unfurls his own wings to gather her up, aligning her coils with his rings and her aching cold with his flame.

It’s ecstasy and it’s comfort and it’s everything in between those things and when she manages to collect her thoughts again she finds she’s settled back into her all too human corporation, collapsed in the bed atop Aziraphale’s chest. He’s grinning at her, eyes half lidded with his own exhaustion. She greets him by sleepily stretching up and kissing his chin before dropping down and tucking her face into his neck.

“You smell like begonias,” she complains.

He laughs and she can feel it rumble through him and then through her and she shivers because it’s a shadow of the feeling they’d just shared in the other space.

“My sincerest apologies,” Aziraphale says. She can hear the smile in his voice and _oh how she loves him._

“‘S rude really. You know I hate begonias. Cheeky little buggers, the lot.”

She feels fingers trailing through her hair tugging loose all the tight pins and coils she wears as Nanny Ashtoreth and then cardng through the freed length of it.

“I admit,” Aziraphale says, “I always find your hair entrancing, but there’s something nostalgic about when you wear it long.”

“Oh no,” Crowley says, voice carefully dry to hide the way it wants to shake, “I’m in love with a sap.”

“You are.” His blunt fingernails scrape at the base of Crowley’s skull, sending shivers down her spine. “Do you know why I smell like begonias?” She shook her head.

“They’re just starting to come in for the season, all bright and beautiful.” Aziraphale pauses and uses the hand not currently playing with her hair to tilt her chin up so he can snare her gaze with his own. She swallows, swept up in the waves of desire surrounding them.

“So you spent the day hiding out there and reading instead of doing your actual job?”

The fingers on her chin sweep up the side of her face, thumb brushing lightly at the skin just below her right eye.

“Hmm, no. They’re so lovely, but you don't like them and I thought that if I removed them I could plant something else. I’m not sure what yet though. Perhaps we could go to a garden center this weekend and you could help me choose?”

For a moment she’s too choked up to speak. She can’t deny that he loves her, not when she felt it so clearly in their other forms. Moreover, now that she knows the shape of it, she can still feel it tingling across her skin. But, well, to hear it spoken so clearly is overwhelming.

“Thought angels played fair,” she says.

“Well,” Aziraphale’s hand leaves her face behind, traces down her body to her hip. She groans and arches, twisting so she can shift her legs to straddle one of his. Crowley has read all about sex, taught humans how it works, helped people rise to power on the back of it’s power. But, as Aziraphale’s fingers sweep closer to her waistband she hesitates.

“Can we, ah, not do that? Right now?” Aziraphale immediately withdraws.

“Of course, my dear,” he says. “Anything you want.”

Crowley swallows because she does want all that, but not now, now with everything else so fresh and the Apocalypse bearing down on them.

So, instead of listing all the things she wants to do to him and have him to to her, or snapping and teleporting them to her flat in Mayfair or the bedroom above the bookshop Aziraphale likes to pretend doesn’t exist, Crowley smiles at him and tucks her head back into the crook of his neck.

She wants to thank him and she thinks that he probably wants to say something ill-advised as well, though they both manage to hold their tongues.

So, instead she carefully presses a kiss to the place where his neck and shoulders meet and says, “Stay with me for a bit?” Aziraphale holds her that much tighter.

“Always, my dear,” he says and lays his own kiss like a benediction on her brow.

* * *

When Warlock and his parents return at the end of the week, they find Nanny Ashtoreth, prim and proper as always, waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. She kneels and scoops Warlock up, tickling his belly in a rare show of open affection before nodding a polite greeting to his parents and whisking him away to the garden where they spend the rest of the afternoon getting quite filthy in the process of assisting Brother Frances in planting a large collection of wildflowers purchased at a little greenhouse in Soho.

In later years, Warlock will swear he heard Nanny Ashtoreth laugh at something Brother Frances said, but no one who knew the pair will ever believe him.

* * *

Footnotes:

1Crowley and Dagon have had each other as Secret Santa partners for the last 2000-odd years, it’s an arrangement that works for them as neither is forced to 1) endure the atrocities Hastur considered gifts (Furbies for the last 15 years running, Crowley regrets ever inventing the little things) or 2) think of something to get Beelzebub (what _does_ one get the Lord of Hell who has nothing and wants nothing? Crowley’s first thought of artisan cow dung likely would not go over well.). Neither Dagon or Crowley will cop to being the one to rig the draw.

[return to text]

2Or even Herself, she’s so scared and afraid, she’d take comfort even from one who spurned her. She can’t feel hatred here, she’s not enough of a person for that, but she thinks she might hate herself a bit for being so willing to come crawling back. Crawly indeed.[return to text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the names of the chapters in this fic are all different configurations of children's string games (sometimes called cat's cradle);  
> Calabesh Net  
>   
> Plinthios Brokhos  
>   
> Pleiades  
> 


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